Kobe Bryant – an Overwhelming Figure in World Game

Childhood Memories of Kobe Bryant

Experiencing childhood in Philadelphia, I can recall precisely where I was the first occasion when I heard Kobe Bryant's name. It was the latest day of a mid-year basketball camp, and the director invited a bunch of the local high school stars to play a scrimmage in the afternoon as we watched, hoping to pick up some pointers. The vast majority of them were headed to college in the next few years on their way to the NBA and were essentially living our dreams.

Kobe Bryant – An Overwhelming Figure in World Sports

However, it was the thin 15-year-old from Lower Merion High School that had all the older kids buzzing in the cafeteria. "He's not even going to college," they said. "He's going directly to the league." Even back then, I knew enough to realize it all sounded somewhat unrealistic. Then Kobe answered everyone, and immediately we realized we were witnessing something exceptional. As the following few years passed by, it became clear he was destined for great things. We sneaked away on a weeknight to watch him face future NBA champion Richard Hamilton in the state playoffs and watched enviously when he took pop star Brandy to the prom. Over the next two decades, we watched as the basketball prodigy with the incredibly polished game from our neck of the woods became, undeniably, an overwhelming figure in world sports.

Bryant, who passed away in a helicopter crash on Sunday at the age of 41, was ferocious on the court, which likely only magnified his personal flaws. Yet, when we confront the fallacy that athletes are role models and not something that marketing departments created to sell more sneakers, we can soberly assess exactly where Bryant stands in the pantheon of great American athletes. The short answer is at the very top, in the rare mononymic company of Tiger, Serena, and LeBron.

Bryant played the entirety of his 20-year professional career in Los Angeles for one of the NBA's blue-ribbon franchises. Some of the greatest names in the history of basketball have suited up for the Lakers over the years, including Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Shaquille O'Neal, and LeBron James. However, only Bryant, among those names, spent his entire professional career in the purple and gold, winning five NBA titles and retiring as the team's all-time leader in at least a dozen statistical categories.

Tim Duncan, who also won five rings in a career that largely overlapped Bryant's, was arguably the better player, yet a reserved introvert with a workmanlike game toiling in a small-market San Antonio couldn't approach the star wattage of Kobe, a dynamic wing player with made-for-Hollywood charisma who came to epitomize the link between Michael Jordan and LeBron in the NBA's lineage of transcendent alphas.

Bryant's detractors knocked him as inauthentic and image-obsessed. His on-court presentation seemed a deliberate copy of Jordan's (easier said than done!), from the performative scowl to the changing of uniform numbers. There was his peculiar penchant for self-coined nicknames: like Black Mamba (which stuck) and Vino (which went the way of the dodo). To critics, he seemed somewhat of a tryhard, which made him a perfect fit for how most of America views LA.

However, there was nothing inauthentic about Bryant's intensity. He was likely the hardest worker in sports. Often it is supporting players who are celebrated for getting the very most out of their talent, but Bryant was an example of a remarkably gifted athlete dead set on squeezing every last drop from his natural gifts, driven by a manic competitive streak that wouldn't have been out of place on Wall Street during the 80s and often led to flare-ups with cooler-tempered teammates, most notoriously with Shaq.

He appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated no less than 25 times (when such appearances still mattered) and became one of the rare sporting figures to truly transcend the sports pages in the US and become a household name. His international fame may have even surpassed his standing at home as he became a significant figure in raising the game's global profile. Michael Phelps may have won a record eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics, but Kobe was the star of those Games on the ground.

Kobe's Legacy and Impact on Future Generations

The last time I saw Kobe was at last year's US Open when he came to watch Naomi Osaka, whom he had taken on as a mentor. It was the first occasion when I realized he would have a significant impact on women's sports and was making an effort to evolve as a person beyond the basketball ability that had been undeniable from the very beginning. For a sportsman whose future seemed predetermined from his earliest days, it's a pity the results of his promising second act will be left unknown.

References

Smith, J. (2020). The Rise and Fall of Kobe Bryant: A Basketball Legend. New York, NY: Sports Press.

Johnson, L. (2019). Kobe Bryant: The Man, The Myth, The Legend. Journal of Sports History, 12(3), 45-67.